MedicalEdge Healthcare Group PA is opening a medical center in Arlington to offer coordinated care for patients 65 and older.

The Dallas-based physicians group has leased 20,000 square feet for its “geriatric medical home,” said Dr. Clay Heighten, president of MedicalEdge. It will occupy the first floor of The Texas Clinic at Arlington, a $14 million Caddis Partners medical office project that broke ground last month.

The geriatric clinic, scheduled to open by year’s end,will include a six-physician primary care practice, as well as a pharmacy, women’s clinic, sleep center, and orthopedic surgery, podiatry, ophthalmology and physical therapy practices. It will house a total of 20 physicians and about 100 support staff — about 15 of which will be new hires, Heighten said.

The Arlington center will be the first of seven or eight such clinics that MedicalEdge aims to open within the next two years, through either expansion of existing clinics or construction of new ones. Targeted sites include Denton, Fort Worth, Richardson, Mesquite, southeast Dallas, Duncanville and the Bachman Lake areas, where MedicalEdge physicians already serve high populations of senior patients.

The centers will be adult internal medicine, or AIM, clinics, and they’ll be based on the medical home concept, Heighten said.

Coordinated care

This approach focuses on the idea that a patient should have a primary care provider who is familiar with his or her medical history, as well as accessible and coordinated care, which cuts down on emergency room visits and hospitalizations. The strategy is especially important for seniors, who often have the most complicated and multilayered medical problems, Heighten said.

Elderly patients are often battling an assemblage of chronic conditions, such as diabetes, amputations, heart attacks, strokes, hip fractures and severe arthritis, he said. About 40% of those with chronic conditions end up seeing an average of 11 doctors when getting their care, he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by 2030, the number of U.S. adults aged 65 years or older will more than double, to about 71 million. What’s more, Medicare spending has grown about ninefold in the past 25 years, increasing from $37 billion in 1980 to $336 billion in 2005. Overall health care spending is on track to increase 25% by 2030, largely due to the aging U.S. population.

To help control expenses, Medicare is looking at pilot projects that test the effectiveness of the medical homes for seniors, said Dr. Bruce Landes, president and CEO of Southwest Physician Associates in Dallas.

The future of geriatric medical homes will largely depend on whether federal health care reform efforts change the business model for health care, such that physicians are paid for the extra coordination of care, rather than the quantity of procedures, tests and services they perform, Landes said.

At some point, MedicalEdge hopes to enhance its geriatric medical home model to include top-end amenities and services for seniors. For now, though, the focus is on streamlining care. “Patients are best served when they have a few physicians that work well together, rather than a jumble of many,” Heighten said.